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Abstract

In this thesis I have argued the case for Katherine Mansfield's Literary Expressionism in my selected stories 'Miss Brill', 'The Fly', 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel', 'Prelude' and 'At the Bay'. I have argued that Mansfield's view of art is most significantly manifested in the dramatic scene in which the suggestion of character is made. It is largely within Mansfield's suggestive method that the poetry of her art is to be found. Through her particular precision with language, Mansfield achieves a peculiar clarity of expression. However, it is through the story's progressive form that the full meaning of her stories can be grasped. In line with the Expressionist concepts of 'harmony' and 'rhythm', Mansfield's stories develop through a number of composite images towards a complex idea, and thus conveying a total image. At the same time as I have wanted to identify Mansfield's Expressionist form, I have wished to untie some myths about her fiction, and the view that her persona and fiction are one, something which has spurred the widespread biographical bias in Mansfield criticism.